Microelectronic System-on-Chip Modeling Using Objects and Their Relationships

This paper discusses efficient methods for modeling of complex microelectronic systems that enable large-scale simulation models while ensuring realizability into hardware. In recent years, there has been a surge of interest in the use of object-oriented languages (such as C++ and Java) for integrated system modeling, as evinced by the growing use of SystemC, Cynapps and SpecC language/libraries. The question remains, however, how an integrated circuit designer is to realize the productivity gains claimed by high-level system modeling languages while ensuring efficient circuit realizations and/or ensuring circuit synthesizability using present high-level/logic-level synthesis technologies.

This paper presents a methodology for using these new languages with object oriented paradigms, providing design examples.